Ida & Billy builds Layered Campus Residence Defined by Courtyards
The Choi Kai Yau Hostel by Ida & Billy Architects sits atop the Chinese University of Hong Kong campus, within the 1970s modernist masterplan of United College designed by Architect Szeto Wei. The hostel comprises of 125 double bedrooms and shared amenities, including a hall, gym, reading room, common room, and pantries within a 6,343 sqm CFA. The project aims to provide a nurturing home for both introverted reflection and extroverted community, through three core design principles: connection to nature, spatial diversity, and dialogue with the campus’s architectural heritage.
The design respects the semi-open courtyard masterplan. Positioned at the end of the arriving path, the UC Mall, to receive students, the hostel steps back to preserve the visual prominence of the campus Library. To maximize peripheral surface area on a compact site, the rooms are arranged around two courtyards shifted to accommodate the topography. These courtyards serve as focal points for the male and female dormitories. Programmatically, public amenities face the campus square to create an active interface, while private bedrooms face outward toward distant landscape views.
the design respects the semi-open courtyard masterplan | all images by Xu Liang Leon, ©Ida & Billy Architects
Tectonic Concrete Frames Balance Campus Heritage and Climate
Continuing United College’s modernist language with a contemporary expression, the design emphasizes tectonic clarity and authentic structural expression. Flat slabs and shear walls create a staggered horizontal framework. Flat slabs are used to minimize floor-to-floor depth, maximize service headroom for corridor trunkings and pipes, while maintaining visual continuity between interior and exterior spaces. The facade addresses two distinct scales: strong horizontal lines facing the campus echo the Library, while a finer, domestic grid defines the dormitory wings to match adjacent teaching blocks. Vertical GRC fins and protruding floor plates provide integrated solar shading according to orientations and exposure. On the roof, cruciform mechanical plantrooms reference the sculptural stair hoods of the campus buildings.
Conceived as a permeable framework, the hostel, developed by Ida & Billy Architects, intertwines architecture and student life with nature. The ground floor is an open colonnade between the campus and surrounding greenery, with glass doors and envelope, and hall doors designed to be opened during normal times for visual and spatial penetration. Dormitories feature large windows with distant views, while open-ended corridors frame views of trees. The two courtyards open to the sky and bring cross-ventilation and daylight deep into the corridors. In the southern courtyard, an ivy screen wall forms a vertical garden to purify and cool the air.
the building mass is pushed outwards and broken down to harmonize with the modernist campus buildings
Shared spaces are distributed throughout the building to extend daily life beyond individual rooms. The courtyards incorporate step seats for outdoor gatherings and cinema screenings. Centrally located pantries, an open-air reading gallery overlooking pine trees, and a roof terrace with distant mountain views provide varied settings for casual encounters. By overlapping the double-height entrance lobby with the shifted courtyards, daily circulation becomes a dynamic sequence of shifting spatial dimensions and vistas, actively fostering a vibrant, inclusive student community.
the dormitory resembles two boulders marking the top of the hill
recessed to align with the courtyard, the dormitory pushes outward like a boulder cantilevering from the hill